Happy Monday makes a special comeback. This one features my awesome girl showing her kryptonite. I’ve been sitting on this video for about a month, because I had mixed feelings about posting it because I never want to do anything that makes fun of Maddie. I decided to go with it because it shows how typical our family is. When her fellow classmates were asked to describe Maddie’s personality earlier this year, they all said she was funny. Of my 3 kids, she’s the one following in my class clown’s footsteps.

Maddie breaks down her thoughts on a very cold Midwestern Halloween. She also discusses how she has joined a great new organization called Best Buddies and her new friend there is named Shea. Sam and Mallory offer up their points of view on what candy they prefer.

Maddie often needs movement to help her brain work more easily. It’s one of the strange elements that makes my girl who she is. She demonstrates it here. I believe this video gives a great insight into what it is like for many kids on the spectrum.

At the end of video I explain why Happy Monday with Maddie is going to just make occasional appearances. These videos are very time-consuming and I’ve had some concern about over-exposing Maddie to the public, so at this point I just haven’t seen the return I was hoping in the awareness and understanding they would bring and have decided to be a lot less active with them. I do know Maddie has loved the fans she has gained and we will continue to occasionally post and stay in touch:)

School starts with Maddie getting up at 6:30am. Maddie is not a morning person…Daddie even less. This is 1 of the reasons we have slowed down on the Happy Monday videos. I thought I would update Maddie’s fans today, though.

1st Day of School and Maddie is over the moon as she meets her new bus staff.

Maddie starts school an hour earlier now, so there isn’t much Happy in her game on Monday morning. Might need to start doing them on Sunday. In lieu of this week, here is the ALS challenge that I did–with Maddie dumping the big bucket of ice cold water on me. Maddie and I had been challenged by my buddy, WIBC’s Ray Steele. (He also challenged Governor’s Mike Pence and Mitch Daniels. So far only the former governor has stepped up.)

Before Maddie was born we went out to get a dog for our family. Our number 1 priority was to get a dog that was great with kids. We went to an animal shelter to look at another dog, but while we were there we met Licorice. We were told he had been there quite awhile, so time was not on his side. To be truthful he wasn’t our first choice, but while we were about to take another dog on a walk, he looked at us with his sad brown eyes and we were melted on the spot. After the shelter workers told us he was always great with kids, we knew our doggy search was over. Licorice became Angus and we could never have asked for a better dog.

Over the past 6 months Angus has started to slow down. His arthritis was causing him major problems. He began to try to make leaps from our staircase, instead of taking each step. A couple of these times we thought he had broken his leg, but after a couple of days he stopped limping and seemed to back to his normal self. After this came the appetite issues…with him not touching his dog bowl on some days and throwing up his food on others. The final decision for us to put him to sleep was caused by his aggressive barking at some kids in the neighborhood. This behavior seemed to stem from dementia that seemed to be setting in. We just couldn’t risk him hurting anyone, so the incredibly hard decision to end his life was made. The video is the story of that afternoon.

Today we meet some great camp counselors at Noble Art Camp and at the end we see a present one of the Happy Monday video watchers gave Maddie after seeing the tough times of losing your front teeth on a bicycle accident.